Tag: technology

  • Michio Kaku: ‘Eternal Life Does Not Violate the Laws of Physics’

    In his best-selling book “Physics of the Future,” American professor Michio Kaku lays out his vision for the world in 2100. Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants, spoke to SPIEGEL about a future in which toilets will have health monitoring sensors and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet.

    SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn’t that a bit immodest?

    Kaku: Just think for a moment about our forefathers in the year 1900. They lived to be 49 years old on average and traveled with horse-drawn wagons. Long distance communication was yelling out the window. If these people could see us today with mobile phones at our ears, Facebook on our screens and traveling with planes they would consider us wizards.

    SPIEGEL: It’s still a big step to go from wizards to gods.

    Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?

    Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there’s electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.

    SPIEGEL: We’ll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?

    Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what’s going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we’ll drive to work.

    SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!

    Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.

    SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?

    Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you’re an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.

    SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?

    Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn’t changed in 100,000 years. We’re social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who’s on first, who’s on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they’re available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.

    SPIEGEL: What’s an example of that?

    Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?

    SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.

    Kaku: That’s the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, “I want direct contact. I don’t want a picture.” The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.

    SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.

    Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn’t changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.

    SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?

    Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a “DNA chip.” It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.

    SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us — did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?

    Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.

    SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?

    Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.

    SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won’t there be more of an urge to create designer babies?

    Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.

    SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?

    Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: “error.” The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn’t function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that’s why we die.

    SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?

    Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don’t wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.

    SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?

    Kaku: In principle, yes.

    SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?

    Kaku: I don’t think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    ‘It’s Nice to be Superman for an Afternoon’

    SPIEGEL: Okay, back to the toilet. What do I do when the toilet tells me that I have cancer cells?

    Kaku: You talk to the wallpaper, and you say…

    SPIEGEL: Excuse me, but you talk to the wallpaper?

    Kaku: As I mentioned, everything will be intelligent, even the wallpaper. You talk to the wallpaper, and you say, “I want to see my doctor.” Boom! A doctor appears on the wall. It’s a RoboDoc, which looks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, but it’s actually an animated figure. It will tell you what is going on in your body and answers all medical questions with 99 percent accuracy, because it has the medical histories of everyone on the planet available.

    SPIEGEL: Will we also have robot driving instructors and robot cooks?

    Kaku: Yes, of course.

    SPIEGEL: But aren’t robots still rather dumb, even after 50 years of research into artificial intelligence?

    Kaku: That’s true. ASIMO, the best robot around today has the intelligence of a cockroach. However, that will change. In the coming decades, robots will be as smart as mice. Now, mice are very smart. They can scurry around, hide behind things, look for food. I can see that in 10, 20, 30 years, we will start to have mice robots, then rabbit robots, cat robots, dog robots, finally monkey robots maybe by the end of the century. They will do dirty, dull and dangerous jobs for us. That means they have to feel pain too.

    SPIEGEL: Are you talking about machines with the ability to suffer?

    Kaku: We will have to build robots with pain sensors in them, because we don’t want them to destroy themselves.

    SPIEGEL: Then won’t we have to start talking about robot rights?

    Kaku: Once we design robots that can feel pain, that’s a tricky point. At that point, people will say, “Well, they’re just like dogs and cats.”

    SPIEGEL: When will machines become a threat, like HAL from the movie ‘2001?’

    Kaku: At some point we can plant a chip in their electronic brains that shuts them down when they start to develop dangerous plans.

    SPIEGEL: But won’t they be intelligent enough to take the chip out themselves?

    Kaku: Sure, but that won’t happen until after 2100.

    SPIEGEL: How comforting.

    Kaku: Then we always have the option of making ourselves even smarter.

    SPIEGEL: Are you referring to the old science fiction idea that our brains are immeasurably smart?

    Kaku: Exactly, and spending the whole day calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t seriously believe that. It goes back to the caveman in us. What do cavemen want? Cavemen want to have the respect of their peers. They want to look good to the opposite sex. They want prestige. If we’re stuck inside a computer calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity, who wants that?

    SPIEGEL: The idea that one day we will all be Supermen or Superwomen sounds really tempting though.

    Kaku: I think what’s going to happen is we will have avatars. They will have all these powers that we want — to be perfect, superhuman and good looking.

    SPIEGEL: Great! Does that mean we can send our avatars to meetings that we don’t want to attend?

    Kaku: You will send your avatars to the Moon or on virtual trips or whatever. But you also have the option of shutting it off and getting back to normal again. The average person will not necessarily want to be Superman, but they may want the option of being Superman for an afternoon. It’s nice to be Superman for an afternoon, but then to say, hey, “let’s go out and have a beer with friends.” Do you see what I’m saying?

    SPIEGEL: Yes, of course. Atavism beats out the avatar. But just how strong are these caveman impulses? Could there one day be a movement against all of this new technology?

    Kaku: Such movements always accompany technological changes. When the telephone first came out, it was very controversial. Throughout history, we only talked to friends, relatives, kids. That’s it, period. Then comes the telephone. There were many voices denouncing it, saying we had to go back to talking to our families, so on and so forth.

    SPIEGEL: You claim in your book that we are the most important generation that has ever lived. Doesn’t every generation think that?

    Kaku: Out of all the generations that have walked the surface of the Earth, we’re the only ones to witness the beginning of the process of becoming a planetary civilization. We decide whether humanity survives.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by “planetary civilization?”

    Kaku: We physicists rank civilizations by energy. A Type 1 planetary civilization uses all the energy that is available on the planet. In a hundred years, we’ll be Type 1. We’re on our way there. We will control the weather. We will control earthquakes and volcanoes eventually. Anything planetary, we will control. Type 2 is stellar. We will control stars, like Star Trek. Then Type 3 is the entire galaxy, where we’ll control the Milky Way galaxy.

    SPIEGEL: Hold on a second. We aren’t even close to that now!

    Kaku: No, we are in a transition. We still get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. Carl Sagan did a more precise calculation. He figured out that we’re actually Type 0.7. So we’re on the threshold of being Type 1. We will have two planetary languages, English and Mandarin. Look at the Olympics. That’s planetary sports. Look at soccer, another planetary sport. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy, if it ever gets off the ground correctly.

    SPIEGEL: We are having a few tiny problems with that last one.

    Kaku: Well, nevertheless, when I look at the larger sweep of things, I see that we are already coming together. We’re entering the birth of a planetary fashion and we are already seeing the birth of planetary culture. Democratization of the world marches on.

    SPIEGEL: What is one thing from the world you imagine that you would like to have today?

    Kaku: Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few more decades to live and, for example, to see the first starship. Also, it’s a shame that I cannot live in the 11th dimension.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

    Kaku: The energy of wormholes, black holes and of the Big Bang. You would have to be a Type 3 civilization before you can begin to manipulate that energy. That’s the province of my field of research, string theory.

    SPIEGEL: I think that’s where we can no longer keep up. Professor Kaku, we thank you for this interview.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

  • A Future of Self-Surveillance? Tech Pioneers Track Bodily Functions Day and Night

    Using smartphone apps and sensors, high tech pioneers are monitoring their own bodily functions such as heart rates, sleep patterns and blood. The ‘self trackers’ dream of a digitalized medicine that will enable people to lead healthier lives by getting around-the-clock updates on what goes on inside their bodies

    By Philip Bethge

    Larry Smarr’s large intestine appears to float in the middle of the room, nestled like a stuffed sausage between his other virtual organs.

    Smarr, a computer science professor, adjusts the dark-tinted 3D glasses perched on his nose and picks up an electronic pointer. “And this is where the wall of my colon is inflamed,” he says, pointing out a spot where the intestinal walls are indeed noticeably swollen.

    A supercomputer combined MRI images of the 63-year-old professor to create the three-dimensional illusion now projected on the wall. It gives the impression that the viewer could go for a stroll inside the researcher’s abdomen. (more…)

  • Lear Jets of the Deep: Private Submarines Gain Popularity with Millionaires

    A new class of private submarines has become the latest plaything for the super rich. They allow would-be adventurers to navigate the wonders of the coral reefs, explore shipwrecks or even to cruise alongside dolphins. The cheapest models start at $1.7 million, but prices can go as high as $80 millionby Philip Bethge

    Just recently, Graham Hawkes tracked down a group of hammerhead sharks. Along for the ride on his Deepflight Super Falcon at the time was an investor named Tom Perkins, a potential client. “We were literally stalking them from below,” Hawkes says. “It felt like flying in liquid sky.”

    Hawkes is an engineer in Point Richmond, California, and his workshop is located at the town’s marina, directly on San Francisco Bay. Visitors don’t exactly wander in here often, but when they do come, they generally have full pockets. Hawkes builds submarines for millionaires.

    His company, Hawkes Ocean Technologies, is one of a number of businesses that specialize in taking the superrich diving. Hawkes’ asking price for the Deepflight Super Falcon, for example, is $1.7 million (€1.3 million). American manufacturer SEAmagine’s Ocean Pearl costs even more, at $2.5 million, but has the benefit of being able to dive to depths of around 900 meters (3,000 feet).

    Triton Submarines, based in Vero Beach, Florida, is another company that specializes in submersibles for the well to do. “Our customers are large yacht owners who want to offer their friends and their family something special,” says Bruce Jones, CEO of Triton. In the deep sea, “they can show them things they have never seen before.”

    Crisis Hasn’t Stopped Demand

    The financial crisis hasn’t stopped the demand for submarines, says Jones, 55. “There are 2,500 large yachts in the world today,” he adds, and most of them have enough room to carry a submarine.

    Today, Jones is in the Bahamas for a trial run. Around 20 prospective clients have come to Grand Bahama Island to try out Triton’s submarines. From the dock in McLeans Town, a speedboat zips them across the turquoise water to the Atlantis II, a retired research vessel Jones uses as the mother ship for his submarine fleet.

    The mustachioed CEO welcomes his guests on the deck, where two yellow submersibles sit waiting. Voluminous floats mounted on their sides also function as ballast tanks. Triton’s trademark features, however, are the acrylic spheres jutting from the top and bottom of the submarines, offering a 360-degree panoramic view.

    A shipboard crane lowers the three-seater Triton 3300/3, which weighs eight metric tons (nine US tons), into the water. The guests board through a hatch in the top. Pilot Troy Engen points to two black valves located behind the gray artificial leather seats and explains they can be used to quickly “bring it (the submarine) up in an emergency.”

    “Roger, payload is okay,” Engen then calls into the headset that keeps him in contact with the Atlantis II. The pilot lets water gush into the floats.

    A few waves crash over the submarine, then it’s calm again. The only sounds are the whirring of the electric motors and the hum of the air conditioning.

    Straight Out of a ‘Bond’ Movie

    Engen pushes the small black joystick on the control panel forward. “Heading 285 (degrees),” he reports to the ship above. “Life support (systems) OK.” The Triton continues on its whirring way, gliding just above a reef like something out of a James Bond movie.

    Colorful fish glow in the submarine’s LED headlights. A nurse shark whooshes past below the passengers’ feet — a surreal experience, since the acrylic wall of the cockpit, around 16 centimeters (6 inches) thick, becomes invisible under water. “Pretty amazing, right?” asks Engen, good-humored and tan.

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    The Triton 3300/3 can remain under water for around 10 hours and its purchasing price is about $3 million. Most of the company’s customers wish to remain anonymous; Jones recently sold two submarines to an Australian businessman with a private island in Belize.

    Jones’ next idea is to take tourists under the sea. He’s building an underwater resort with submerged suites (price per week: $15,000) off a private island in the Fiji archipelago. Five submarines will be on hand to ferry guests across artificial reefs during the day. “I am just an old kid living a dream,” the CEO says. As a boy, he wrote letters to legendary French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, though Jones says regretfully, “Sadly, he never wrote back.”

    Triton’s submarines are large and heavy machines, hardly useable without a mother ship, but Graham Hawkes in California has developed a very different submarine concept. His vessels are sportier and slimmer — they look like small airplanes with truncated wings.

    A ‘Flight Over Ancient Shipwrecks’

    “We’re building the Learjets of the deep,” says the inventor, who likes to compare his work with that of aviation pioneers. He speaks in flowery terms, promising a “flight over ancient shipwrecks,” “barrel-rolling with the dolphins” and “skyhopping with whales.”

    A new design principle makes these lightweight vessels possible. Unlike other submarines, Deepflight models don’t sink using their own weight, instead applying a similar principle of physics to that used by airplanes: When water streams across the inverted wings, the underwater vessel is drawn downward.

    One of the Super Falcons stands propped up in Hawkes’ workshop in Point Richmond. Two hemispheres of Plexiglas curve up from the top of the cigar-shaped submarine, resembling fighter jet cockpits. Hawkes clambers into the front cockpit and explains the technology involved. A joystick steers the submarine. Instruments indicate cabin pressure and oxygen content in the air. A compass and artificial horizon provide orientation even in murky water.

    This latter-day Captain Nemo has completed around 200 dives with his submarines. A few months ago, Hawkes traveled to the Gulf of Aqaba at the invitation of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. With researchers onboard, Hawkes saw nearly all of Jordan’s coast. “We flew along the whole contour of a coral reef,” he recalls. “I felt like a bush pilot.”

    Graham Hawkes and his wife Karen have set up a “flight school” for submarines as a way of attracting new clients. Many of the customers are enormously wealthy CEOs. Virgin founder Richard Branson, for example, recently purchased one of Hawkes’ Merlin submarines, which the billionaire now rents out to visitors on his private Caribbean isle of Necker Island for $25,000 a week.

    Plans for More Affordable Subs

    But Hawkes has plans to make his submarines affordable for the less wealthy as well. He hopes to be able to bring the price for his “Ferraris of the ocean” down to around $250,000, as soon as there is high enough demand for the Deepflight vessels. “We’ve uncovered a new customer base with our submarines that nobody had thought of,” Hawkes says, expressing hope for his business’ future development.

    When that happens, the super rich will have to look for something more exclusive — perhaps the Phoenix 1000 model, made by manufacturer US Submarines, also part of Triton CEO Jones’ submarine empire.

    Passengers on this 65-meter (210-foot) submersible yacht can travel in comfort both above and below water. Its luxury berths easily hold 20 guests. The manufacturer promotes the Phoenix 1000 as a the unique “opportunity to explore the depths of the world’s oceans in perfect comfort and safety.”

    Such luxury comes at a price, of course. The Phoenix 1000 costs approximately $80 million.

    Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

  • The Stench of Money: Canada’s Environment Succumbs to Oil Sands

    Canada is home to the world’s third largest oil reserves. But extracting the black gold is difficult, and threatens to destroy both the surrounding environment and the homeland of native tribes. With protests growing against a planned US pipeline, the oil sands controversy threatens to spread south.

    Celina Harpe holds up the map like an indictment. “The oil companies are into Moose Lake now,” she says, angrily tapping the paper. Workers have apparently already begun surveying the land.

    “I cried when I heard that,” says Harpe, the elder of the Cree First Nation community based in Fort MacKay in the Canadian province of Alberta. “That’s where I was born.”

    Her feet are shod in moose-leather moccasins decorated with brightly-colored beads. Over her neatly-pressed trousers she wears a checked lumberjack shirt.

    Harpe gets up off her worn sofa and steps out onto the terrace of her blue-painted log cabin. The mighty Athabasca River is just a stone’s throw away. “We can’t drink the water anymore,” says Harpe, 72. Berries and medicinal herbs no longer grow in the woods. Even the moose have become scarce. Harpe wrings her wrinkled hands. “We can’t live off the land anymore,” she laments. “Our livelihood has been taken away from us, and they haven’t even asked if they can use the land.”

    An unequal battle is being waged in Alberta. Multinational oil companies are talking about the biggest oil boom in decades. Standing in their way are people like Celina Harpe, whose culture and health are threatened because the ground under their feet contains the planet’s third-largest reserves of crude oil.

    Geopolitical Significance

    Experts estimate that up to 170 billion barrels of crude oil could be extracted from Canada’s oil sands. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more black gold. In addition, the Alberta deposits are of huge geopolitical significance. Indeed, the US already buys more oil from neighboring Canada than from all the nations in the Persian Gulf region put together.

    Very soon, still more of the so-called bitumen could be helping to fire up the US economy. President Barack Obama wants to decide by the end of the year whether it is in his country’s interests to build a 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) pipeline from Alberta to Houston in Texas.

    This pipeline, named Keystone XL, could pump up to 1.3 million barrels of crude oil a day to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. But whereas the industry is dreaming of an oil rush, protests against the plans are growing. Environmentalists spent two weeks in August and September demonstrating in front of the White House against the exploitation of Canada’s oil sands. Among others, they have the support of 10 Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama and former Vice President Al Gore.

    The protesters’ rage is directed at a form of oil considered the world’s dirtiest. Ecologists are also worried about the fate of wetlands and water reservoirs along the route of the planned pipeline, including the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies no fewer than eight US states with water.

    Above all, the exploitation of the Canadian oil sands could also lead the US to put off seriously thinking about renewable energy sources for many decades to come. “The point is not to get ourselves hooked on the next dirty stuff,” says US environmentalist Bill McKibben, one of the spokesmen of the anti-oil sands movement. He thinks the exploitation of the sands would make it impossible for America to meet its CO2-reduction targets.

    ‘A Dirty Needle’

    “It’s [like] a drug addict reaching for a dirty needle from a fellow addict,” NASA climate researcher James Hansen says. “It’s crazy, and the president should understand that and exercise leadership and reject the pipeline.”

    Criticism of the plans is also coming from Europe. Only last week the European Commission decided to define oil extracted from oil sands as particularly harmful to the environment. If the European Parliament and EU member states agree, it will make it particularly expensive to import it into the European Union. Importers could, for example, be forced to invest in organic fuels to compensate for the increase in CO2 emissions. The Canadian government is opposed to such moves.

    The area around the town of Fort McMurray, a ramshackle assortment of ugly purpose-built houses in northeastern Alberta, is the epicenter of the oil sands industry. Beefy four-wheel-drive vehicles race along the town’s roads. In winter the temperatures fall to as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s when the locals retreat to the Boomtown Casino or the Oil Can Tavern, a neon yellow-illuminated bar of dubious repute.

    The first oil prospectors came to the region more than a century ago. The commercial exploitation of the oil sands began with the construction of the first extraction plants in the mid-1960s. Suncor and Syncrude were the first two companies involved, but rising oil prices have since attracted the industry’s giants, including Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

    Heavy equipment is used to dredge out a mixture of sand, clay, water and heavy oil created from the plankton of a primeval ocean. The upward thrust of the Rocky Mountains pushed the reserves into their present position about 70 million years ago. The area of Alberta underneath which the oil sands lie today is about the size of Iowa (see graphic on left).

    The Oil Sands Discovery Centre in Fort McMurray contains a sample of oil sand under a glass dome. Visitors can open a small hatch and smell the contents. Crumbled oil sand looks like coffee grounds, and stinks of diesel. It is the stench of big money.

    Some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Fort McMurray, the smell hangs in the air day and night. The drive north along Highway 63 leads into the seemingly endless pine forests of the boreal climatic zone. But the woods soon open up, affording a clear view of the smokestacks of an immense industrial complex in the center of an apocalyptic-looking lunar landscape.

    Yellow sulfur tailings flash in the distance. Walls of earth surround a gigantic pit in which Caterpillar 797F industrial tippers are shunting to and fro. Each of these tippers can carry up to 360 metric tons of oil sand in a single load. Their wheels alone are four meters (13 feet) high. The plant is the Mildred Lake Mine belonging to the Syncrude company. Approximately 300,000 barrels of oil are produced on the site every day.

    Oil sands contain about 10 percent bitumen on average. To separate the oil from the mixture, the sand is put into a caustic soda solution at about 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit). The bitumen floats to the top of the slurry, from where it can be skimmed off. It is then upgraded to produce what is known as synthetic crude oil (see graphic).

    A Dirty Business

    This procedure enables more than 90 percent of the bitumen to be extracted from the oil sands. The only problem is what to do with the remaining few percent. Mixed with water, sand and clay, it ends up in huge storage basins that already span an area of about 170 square kilometers (65 square miles) in Alberta. The sand quickly sinks to the bottom, leaving a gel-like suspension of minute particulate matter that takes up to 30 years to settle.

    The sludge also contains heavy metals and chemicals. Environmentalists accuse the operators of allowing some of the water to seep into the ground. Indeed, elevated concentrations of lead, cadmium and mercury have been measured in the nearby Athabasca River and Canadian Indians speak of deformed fish and complain that their people are contracting rare forms of cancer. A definitive connection with the oil sands extraction, however, has not yet been made.

    From a hill at the edge of the Syncrude site you can look straight down into the ponds. Oily streaks cover the surface. Last October, 350 ducks landed here during a hailstorm. Their feathers covered in bitumen, they all had to be euthanized. Hollow shots from propane canons now echo across the seemingly endless plains to frighten other birds away. Scarecrows tied to oil barrels bob gently on the ponds.

    Biologists hired by the oil companies are trying to reclaim the land. The hill on the edge of the Syncrude site, for example, is directly above a former mine. A sign informs visitors that if they return in 20 years time, they will find “a landscape reclaimed with lakes, forests, wetlands,” an open invitation for “hiking and fishing.” For now, bison graze on a nearby meadow.

    Gripped by Desperation

    Environmentalists say this is all just greenwashing. “This land is definitely being destroyed forever,” says Melina Laboucan-Massimo, gazing scornfully across the artificial oasis surrounded by gouged out earth. The 30-year-old works as an energy expert for Greenpeace and fights for the rights of the first nations, as Canada’s native inhabitants are known. Laboucan-Massimo is herself a member of the Cree nation, and was born in the area.

    When she sees what is happening to her tribe’s traditional homelands, she seems to be gripped by desperation. Only last April, a pipeline burst just a few miles from her aunt’s house, spilling 4.5 million liters (1 million gallons) of oil.

    Although there are agreements between the native inhabitants and the Canadian state giving the first nations land and usage rights, it’s not clear what the contracts mean for the exploitation of the oil sands. The Canadian Supreme Court is currently considering an appeal by several first nations for a greater say in oil exploitation. Some 23,000 Canadian Indians still live in the oil sands area.

    “My father’s family lived off the land,” says Laboucan-Massimo. “My grandparents hunted, they fished, they trapped; they lived in a more symbiotic relationship with the earth.” Many native Canadians now work for the oil industry: “They are essentially getting paid to destroy their children’s future,” she says.

    For years now, Laboucan-Massimo has been fighting an exhausting battle against the industry. “So far they have only developed like 3 percent of the tar sands in Alberta,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of hope if they develop as much land as they want.”

    Numerous new opencast mines have already been approved; many others are still in planning. The prospect of a direct pipeline to heavy-oil refineries in Texas has prompted investors to reach for their checkbooks.

    Oil Tanks in the Forest

    The International Energy Agency predicts production of conventional oil will soon reach its peak. Oil production in Alberta, by contrast, could more than double to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2025. At today’s prices, that means that the oil sands in Canada, exploitable with today’s technology, are worth about $16 trillion.

    And production costs are falling constantly. Whereas a barrel of oil used to cost almost $75 to produce, new production methods promise to cut that to about $50.

    The eight-seater Beechcraft Super King Air 350, leased by Cenovus Energy, takes off into the skies over Fort McMurray. While the plane is gaining altitude, the shimmering Athabasca River comes into view. Then the mines. From the air they look like oozing wounds in the midst of the green forest. Soon square clearings can also be seen, each with its own oil derrick. Straight roads slice through the forest; the trails left by the geologists searching for the oil sands below.

    As the plane descends, oil tanks and chimneys appear near a lake. Christina Lake is the name of this Cenovus production plant, one of the world’s most modern. But there’s no sign of a mine; the oil sands at the site are being drilled here rather than dug up.

    About 80 percent of the oil sands in Canada are too deep to be retrieved using opencast mining. More than 50 years ago, US geologist Manley Natland came up with idea to separate oil and sand below ground rather than digging them up first. Natland suggested superheating the oil sands so that the bitumen liquefies and can be pumped to the surface. Only now are the required machines available. Engineers can now pump 250 degree Celsius (480 degree Fahrenheit) steam through a borehole and deep down into the ground.

    ‘10,000 Barbecues’

    Cenovus perfected the procedure at Christina Lake. The plant is currently undergoing a dramatic expansion. By the end of the decade, the planners hope it will be producing 258,000 barrels a day, enough to supply some 4 million US citizens with energy for 24 hours.

    “We expect to produce oil at this facility for more than 30 years,” says Drew Zieglgansberger of Cenovus. The youthful-looking manager in blue overalls leads the way to one of five towering steam generators that form the heart of the oil factory. Zieglgansberger climbs a ladder on the front of the gigantic structure and looks through a small window into the white-hot fire burning at 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit), turning water into super-heated steam. The plant generates as much heat as “10,000 barbecues,” the manager proudly declares.

    Operating the mammoth oven is a dirty business. Natural gas is burned to bring the machines up to their operating temperature. In fact the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil is needed to recover 10 barrels of oil. The European Commission has calculated that recovering oil from oil sands is about 22 percent more harmful to the environment than conventional crude oil. The US Environmental Protection Agency has even suggested it creates 82 percent more greenhouse gas emissions.

    But that’s not all: Heating bitumen also releases sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides and heavy metals into the air, all of which later return to earth as acid rain. The Canadian Ministry for Natural Resources has confirmed that drilling generates twice the emissions as conventional oil production. Worse still, it’s not clear how drilling affects the water table. The independent Council of Canadian Academies regrets that such information is “absent.”

    Zieglgansberger accepts that there are problems. “Yes, we have the dirtiest oil in the world”, he openly admits. But it’ll be another 50 years before renewable energy can replace oil. “It is needed as a bridge to the next energy source.”

    Destined to Be Lost Forever

    Industry lobbyists are increasing their pressure on Washington. Pipeline operator TransCanada has close ties with the office of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The company’s current chief lobbyist was a top advisor to Clinton during the 2008 presidential primaries.

    Most analysts already assume that Obama will eventually authorize the Keystone XL pipeline. Too many jobs are believed to be on the line, and oil has too great a strategic significance to the US.

    Nevertheless, the pipeline’s opponents continue to rally their supporters. A human chain around the White House is planned for early November. However McKibben doubts it will have much of an impact. “The oil companies have more money than God,” he says.

    Time clearly appears to have run out for the native inhabitants of Alberta’s northeast. Their traditional way of life seems destined to be lost forever. Cenovus Manager Zieglgansberger takes a sober view of the situation: “We are now neighbors, whether they want us here or not.” The oil man is at pains to stress that he respects first-nation traditions. “We bring our stakeholders out with us before we do any disturbance,” Zieglgansberger assures us.

    Such respect seems to be rather limited. When tribal elders discovered a traditional burial ground on the site of one of the Cenovus plants, the oil company agreed to preserve the holy shrine.

    The cemetery now lies in the middle of the industrial complex on a tiny square of land spared from the lumberjacks.

    Now the native Indians must pass directly by the oil tanks to honor their dead.

    Translated from the German by Jan Liebelt

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

  • Oil sands activist Melina Laboucan-Massimo: ‘What you do to the land you do to yourself’

    Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Climate campaigner with Greenpeace Canada and member of the Cree First Nation, on oil sands operations in northern Alberta, threats to her homeland, and the planned Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Houston, Texas.

    Q: US-president Barack Obama has to decide before the end of the year if TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline can go forward. Which effects would the construction have?

    Laboucan-Massimo: If this pipeline is built, the amount of tar sands that will be produced in Alberta is going to increase enormously. And thats problematic because we are already seeing unchecked tar sands development in Alberta. We are already hearing of contaminated water sources. We are already seeing the boreal forest being destroyed and the woodland caribou disappear from the areas where tar sands development takes place. It’s not a thriving, living ecosystem anymore. Also, there is a potential risk for leaks and spills all along the pipeline corridor, and TransCanada does not seem to be able to guarantee that a spill won’t happen. Part of the Keystone-Pipeline has already been built, and we have seen 12 spills already in its first year of operation.

    Q: What’s wrong with producing oil out of Alberta’s oil sands?

    Laboucan-Massimo: Oil from the tar sands is an unconventional fossil fuel. It is a lot harder to reach than conventional oil. It takes more energy, more water and results in more carbon emissions than conventional fossil fuel sources. The ecological footprint is huge. The oil companies have only developed about three percent out of the land they are seeking to exploit. If they develop as much as they want to, that is gonna be very problematic for the way that people live here.

    Q: You were born in this area. As a person connected to the land – how do you feel about the oil sands industry?

    Laboucan-Massimo: It really hurts my heart to see the effects on the land, the animals, the people and the water. Our cultural fabric is based off this land. My Dads side of my family was very connected to the land. They lived off the land, they hunted, they fished, they trapped, they lived in a more symbiotic relationship with the earth. Before colonization, the earth was in a pristine condition for a reason. The indigenous people that lived here had a deep understand and respect for the land. They had traditional ecological knowledge. They knew that what you do to the land you do to yourself. What we see now, however, is a disconnection between people and the earth. People cannot access certain parts of their traditional territories anymore because they are being cut off by the leases that are given out to multinational oil corporations who don’t have the same regard for the land as the people that have lived their for thousands of years.

    Q: What kind of impact do you see on the people?

    Laboucan-Massimo: People have called this resource a curse, and for good reason. There are serious health issues like respiratory illnesses, emphysema or asthma, and also elevated rates of certain cancers. We are not only seeing it in the people, we are seeing it in the animals too. People have found fishes in the Athabasca River that have tumors on them, that have crooked spines. Food, which was once extremely healthy, is now becoming contaminated.

    Q: But local people benefit a lot from the oil exploration.

    Laboucan-Massimo: I don’t agree with that, I see a lot of inequity. The community that I was born into for example still has no running water. Also, a lot of schools are being underresourced in the communities to this day. The industry likes to say ‘we provide jobs’, but how long will those jobs last? If it is a construction job, the job will be over when the plants are all set and done. Fact is: Its just a wage. You are getting paid to essentially destroy your children’s future. You are getting paid to be around toxic chemicals. You are getting paid to potentially have health effects in the future and to destroy the very land that your ancestors lived upon. Billions of dollars are taken out of resources from our traditional territories, and yet, this development is not benefiting the people that actually live here. It is benefiting the companies. And their people don’t live here. They don’t have to live out the consequences of the destruction of the land.

  • Oozing Biofuel: Algae Could Solve World’s Fuel Crisis

    Genetically modified blue and green algae could be the answer to the world’s fuel problems. Bioengineers have already developed algae that produce ethanol, oil and even diesel — and the only things the organisms need are sunlight, CO2 and seawater.

    Biochemist Dan Robertson’s living gas stations have the dark-green shimmer of oak leaves and are as tiny as E. coli bacteria. Their genetic material has been fine-tuned by human hands. When light passes through their outer layer, they excrete droplets of fuel.

    “We had to fool the organism into doing what I wanted it to do,” says Robertson, the head of research at the US biotech firm Joule Unlimited. He proudly waves a test tube filled with a green liquid. The businesslike biochemist works in a plain, functional building on Life Sciences Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    His laboratory is sparsely furnished and the ceiling is crumbling. Nevertheless, something miraculous is happening in the lab, where Robertson and his colleagues are working on nothing less than solving the world’s energy problem. They have already created blue algae that produce diesel fuel.

    Scientists rave about a new, green revolution. Using genetic engineering and sophisticated breeding and selection methods, biochemists, mainly working in the United States, are transforming blue and green algae into tiny factories for oil, ethanol and diesel.

    Betting Millions on Algae

    A green algae liquid sloshes back and forth in culture vats and circulates through shiny bioreactors and bulging plastic tubes. The first tests of algae-based fuels are already being conducted in automobiles, ships and aircraft. Investors like the Rockefeller family and Microsoft founder Bill Gates are betting millions on the power of the green soup. “Commercial production of crude oil from algae is the most obvious and most economical possible way to substitute petroleum,” says Jason Pyle of the California-based firm Sapphire Energy, which is already using algae to produce crude oil.

    The established oil industry is also getting into the business. “Oils from algae hold significant potential as economically viable, low-emission transportation fuels and could become a critical new energy source,” says Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development at Exxon Mobil. The oil company is investing $600 million (€420 million) in genetic entrepreneur Craig Venter’s firm Synthetic Genomics.

    (-> read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

    The technology holds considerable promise. Indeed, whoever manages to be the first to sell ecologically sustainable and climate-neutral biofuel at competitive prices will not only rake in billions, but will also write history.

    Do-it-yourself diesel barons launched the biofuel industry decades ago when they used old French-fry grease to fuel modest agricultural machines. Today, hundreds of thousands of cars run on ethanol derived from grain. In the United States, for example, more than 40 percent of gasoline contains ethanol additive. The fuel is produced in huge fermenters the size of blimps, by fermenting a mash of corn or rye with yeast.

    But ethanol as a biofuel has a bad reputation. One hectare (2.47 acres) of corn produces less than 4,000 liters of ethanol a year, and 8,000 liters of water are required to produce a liter of ethanol. Besides, crops grown for ethanol take away valuable farmland for food production. The last growing season marked the first time US farmers harvested more corn for ethanol production than for use as animal feed. One of the adverse consequences of the biofuel boom is that it is driving up food prices.

    Astonishingly Productive

    For this reason, many environmentalists now believe that growing energy plants is the wrong approach. Algae, on the other hand, do not require any farmland. Sun, saltwater, a little fertilizer and carbon dioxide are all the undemanding little organisms need to thrive. And because they consume about as much CO2 during photosynthesis as is later released when the oil they produce is burned, algae-based fuels are also climate neutral.

    Algae are also astonishingly productive. A hectare of sunny desert covered with algae vats can yield almost eight times as much biofuel per unit of biomass in a year than corn grown for energy purposes.

    Sapphire is one of the pioneers of the industry. CEO Pyle has a vision of transforming desert areas into fertile, energy-producing land. “We have to grow algae like rice, in shallow patties of water on thousands of hectares,” he says. This, he says, is the only way to produce algae-based oil in large quantities and at competitive prices.

    Sapphire expects one barrel of its green petroleum to cost between $70 and $100 in the future, which is significantly cheaper than petroleum. However, as with grain production, this requires the use of high-performance varieties. According to Pyle, his company has optimized the yield, resistance to disease and “harvest capability” of the green algae it uses. Sapphire’s engineers are already testing their green miracle algae at a small plant in New Mexico. Together with Monsanto, which produces agricultural chemicals, and industrial gas company Linde, the algae makers plan to explore commercial opportunities at a 120-hectare site soon.

    ‘We Simply Have to Build It’

    But the Sapphire algae can only be a beginning, because they merely enrich the oil internally. To obtain the oil, the algae must be harvested and the oil extracted in a costly and complex process.

    To overcome this obstacle, other scienty way to produce algae-based oil in large quantities and at competitive prices.

    Sapphire expects one barrel of its green petroleum to cost between $70 and $100 in the future, which is significantly cheaper than petroleum. However, as with grain production, this requires the use of high-performance varieties. According to Pyle, his company has optimized the yield, resistance to disease and “harvest capability” of the green algae it uses. Sapphire’s engineers are already testing their green miracle algae at a small plant in New Mexico. Together with Monsanto, which produces agricultural chemicals, and industrial gas company Linde, the algae makers plan to explore commercial opportunities at a 120-hectare site soon.

    ‘We Simply Have to Build It’

    But the Sapphire algae can only be a beginning, because they merely enrich the oil internally. To obtain the oil, the algae must be harvested and the oil extracted in a costly and complex process.

    To overcome this obstacle, other scientists are developing algae that don’t even have to be harvested. Instead, they essentially ooze the fuel of the future. Evolution has not yielded anything that produces biofuel from CO2 on a large scale, explains biologist Venter, “which is why we simply have to build it.”

    The first of these miracle organisms can already be admired in the Joule laboratory. The bioengineers’ tools include culture mediums, incubators and, most importantly, databases containing the DNA sequences of thousands of microorganisms. Robertson and his team search the databases for promising gene fragments, which they then isolate and inject into the genetic material of blue algae.

    ‘You Could Put Our Product in Your Car’

    Dozens of varieties of the microorganisms, also known as cyanobacteria, bob up and down in bulbous beakers at Joule. A green brew fills small photobioreactors, which are used to test the blue algae under various environmental conditions. “Here we simulate for example the day-and-night rhythm of Texas,” says Robinson, explaining one of the experiments. The company has a pilot plant in Texas.

    The program is as complex as it is costly. Nevertheless, success appears to be proving the genetic engineers right. The microbiologists at Joule have created blue algae strains that pump so-called alkanes outward through their membranes. Alkanes are energy-rich hydrocarbons contained in diesel fuel. “You have to persuade the cell that it stops growing and makes the product of interest and does it continuously,” Robinson explains. In contrast to ethanol, the end product is not a low-quality fuel, but a highly pure product that contains no sulfur or benzene. “You could put our product in your car,” says Robinson.

    The laboratory algae are now doing their work in high-tech bioreactors, where carbon dioxide is constantly bubbling through shimmering green panels that look like solar collectors. Robertson’s ultimate goal is to derive about 140,000 liters of biofuel a year from one hectare of land — a yield 40 times as high as with corn grown for ethanol. Joule has bought about 500 hectares of desert land in New Mexico to build a first commercial plant.

    Large Amounts of CO2 Required

    But will the laboratory creations really work as well in open fields as they do in the lab? Calculations show that some algae plants will likely consume more fertilizer and energy per hectare than grain crops. And the carbon dioxide in the air won’t be enough to feed the microalgae. Scientists estimate that a commercial algae fuel plant would require about 10,000 cubic meters of CO2 a day. Whether and how large amounts of the gas could be derived from the exhaust gases of large coal power plants, for example, and then brought to the algae farms, remains unclear.

    The farms could also require enormous tracts of land. In a recent article in the journal Science, researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands calculated that, in theory, an area the size of Portugal would have to be filled with algae pools to satisfy Europe’s current fuel needs. A “leap in microalgae technology” is needed to at least triple productivity, say experts.

    Pyle and Robertson are convinced that this increase is possible. They insist that algae technology can be used to meet a significant portion of our energy requirements in the future. “There is certainly enough non-arable land with enough solar radiation and enough CO2 and water sourcing in the world,” says Robertson. Another important advantage, he adds, is that algae-based fuel could easily be pumped into the oil industry’s existing pipelines and refineries, and that cars and aircraft would not have to be modified to accommodate the biofuel.

    But even the pioneers admit that the switch to algae-based fuel will likely take a while longer. Sometimes completely mundane things still stand in the way of the green revolution.

    The algae growers at Sapphire, for example, face competition from little 10-legged creatures. “Shrimp think algae are good food,” says CEO Pyle. “If you don’t pay attention, you will ultimately have a shrimp farm.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    (-> read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

  • Jonathan Schell: ‘Our Illusion Is that We Can Control Nuclear Energy’

    In a SPIEGEL interview, peace activist and author Jonathan Schell discusses the lessons of the Fukushima disaster, mankind’s false impression that it can somehow safely produce electricity from the atom, and why he thinks the partial meltdown in Japan could mark a turning point for the world.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Schell, what unsettled you the most about the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe?

    Schell: Clearly this whole accident just went completely off the charts of what had been prepared for. If you look at the manuals for dealing with nuclear safety accidents, you’re not going to find a section that says muster your military helicopters, dip buckets into the sea and then try as best you can to splash water onto the reactor and see if you can hit a spent fuel pool. There’s going to be no instruction saying, go and get your riot control trucks to spray the reactor, only to find that you’re driven back by radiation. The potential for total disaster was clearly demonstrated.

    SPIEGEL: But supporters of nuclear energy are already preparing a different narrative. They say that an old, outdated nuclear power plant was hit by a monster tsunami and an earthquake at the same time — and, yet, so far only a handful of people have been exposed to radioactive energy. Not a single person has died.

    Schell: Clearly it’s better than if you had had a massive Chernobyl-type release of energy. But I think that any reasonable analysis will show that this was not a power plant that was under control. The operators were thrown back on wild improvisation. The worst sort of disaster was a desperate mistake or two away. Through a bunch of workarounds and frantic fixes, technicians at Fukushima headed that off, but that was no sure thing. No one will be able honestly to portray this event as a model of nuclear safety. It would be like saying that the Cuban missile crisis showed the safety of nuclear arsenals.

    SPIEGEL: It is not just in Germany, but also in the United States and China that people are stockpiling supplies of iodine tablets. And shipments from Japan are supposed to be tested for radioactivity. Where does this profound fear of nuclear energy come from?

    Schell: In the public mind, nuclear power is associated with nuclear weapons. In both, a nuclear chain reaction is, in fact, the source of power. It’s true that you can’t have an atomic explosion in a nuclear power plant, but people are quite right to make that association. For example there is also the proliferation connection. In other words, the problem with the association of nuclear power with nuclear weapons goes beyond the escape of radiation and Chernobyl-type accidents. The third big challenge is, of course, the waste problem. You have to keep that waste underground for maybe a half-million years. So we’re acting in a kind of cosmic way in the terrestrial setting, even though we just don’t have the wisdom and staying power to do so.

    SPIEGEL: You say that dealing with nuclear energy is like gambling with “Mother Nature’s power.” Why is it so totally different from other sources of energy?

    Schell: Because it’s so colossally more powerful. Comparable energy can be found, at best, in the center of stars. It’s basically not found on earth naturally, and it’s only through our own scientific brilliance that we’ve been able to introduce it into the terrestrial setting. But, unfortunately, we’re not as advanced morally, practically and politically as we are scientifically, so we are not prepared to control this force properly. The most dangerous illusion we have concerning nuclear energy is that we can control it.

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

    SPIEGEL: Despite all these concerns, we have seen an emerging renaissance in nuclear energy in recent years.

    Schell: I don’t think there really was a nuclear renaissance. There was the phrase “nuclear renaissance,” but already in many parts of the world the financial aspects of nuclear power were not working out. The bankers were not stepping forward to finance new power plants. Insurance companies were reluctant to cover the risk.

    SPIEGEL: Many environmentalists are now even calling for an expansion of nuclear power — because they see it as the only way to limit climate change.

    Schell: I find their arguments weak. In the first place, there are about 450 nuclear power plants around the world. To make a serious dent in carbon emissions, you would have to double or triple that –and not only in countries as technically sophisticated as Japan. More importantly, I fear the attempted solution would be self-defeating in its own terms. Think how the high the cost will be if we pour our scarce resources into this faulty one and then there is a truly catastrophic accident down the road, and we were forced by this to liquidate the investment. This would be not only a disaster in its own right, but a disaster for the overall effort to head off global warming.

    SPIEGEL: German Chancellor Angela Merkel had always been a supporter of nuclear energy. Now she is talking about expediting Germany’s planned phase-out of nuclear power. Will Germany be able to succeed in eschewing nuclear power entirely?

    Schell: The anti-nuclear movement certainly has been stronger in Germany than in practically any other country, even before the Fukushima incident. I’d say it looks quite possible that Germany will go back to the phase-out policy, and that its nuclear power plants will be taken offline quickly. And I’d be surprised if Japan did not go in the same direction.

    SPIEGEL: Why don’t we see similar anti-nuclear protests in the United States?

    Schell: The whole nuclear industry has had a low profile in the United States, perhaps, in part, because we haven’t seen the construction of new power plants since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.

    SPIEGEL: But President Barack Obama has now announced the construction of new nuclear power plants.

    Schell: … and people in the US don’t seem to be bothered by it so far. That’s been true, until now. New polls show that support for nuclear power has dropped sharply. Honestly, I don’t think Americans have been thinking about this issue very much. Now the Fukushima accident will concentrate people’s minds.

    SPIEGEL: Will Obama abandon his pro-nuclear energy policies?

    Schell: There’s a real chance that, in practice, he will back off — also for budgetary reasons. If you try to add in all kinds of new safety features, then you raise the price. The cost of building a nuclear power plant today already costs tens of billions of dollars.

    SPIEGEL: The greatest enthusiasm to be found anywhere once permeated the US shortly after the discovery of nuclear energy. During the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration enthusiastically promoted its “Atoms for Peace” program.

    Schell: That story is interesting because with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, we see the close connection at every stage of nuclear power with nuclear weapons. Eisenhower increased the US arsenal from around 1,400 to 20,000 nuclear weapons. But he also wanted an element of peace in his policy. This is where the “Atoms for Peace” program came in, whereby countries would be given technology to produce nuclear power, the “friendly atom,” in exchange for constraints on proliferation of nuclear weapons — the “destructive atom.” That rationale is still embodied today in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    SPIEGEL: Obama has outlined his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But the reaction to it has been lukewarm, even within his own team.

    Schell: Within the Obama administration, it seems to be the president himself — and possibly even the president alone — who really believes in this vision. But he has the public on his side. If you ask people if they would like to live in a world without nuclear weapons, a very high majority answer in the affirmative. On the other hand, there is a powerful bureaucratic infrastructure left in the Pentagon, in the State Department, in the Energy Department that is not ready to translate Obama’s vision into action and works to thwart it. He needs more supporters among his own officials.

    World Destruction Is Less Likely Today, But ‘Technically’ Possible

    SPIEGEL: Is a world without nuclear weapons even a realistic vision? With the technology already out there, wasn’t the genie permanently released from the bottle with Hiroshima in 1945?

    Schell: There will never be a world that is not nuclear capable. Once that knowledge was acquired, it could never be lost. So the art of living without nuclear weapons is an art of living without them, but with the knowledge of how to make them. The classic argument against a nuclear weapons-free world is that somebody will make use of that residual knowledge, build a nuclear weapon and start giving orders to a defenseless world. But what I point out is that other countries would also have that knowledge and they could, in very short order, be able to return to nuclear armament. Therefore, the imbalance is much more temporary than it first seems.

    SPIEGEL: Is the outlawing of nuclear weapons possible without also abolishing nuclear energy as well?

    Schell: A nuclear weapons-free world should be one in which nuclear technology is under the strictest possible control. But strict control of all nuclear technology is, of course, far more difficult as long as you continue to have nuclear energy production, as long as uranium continues to be enriched and as long plutonium is still being made somewhere.

    SPIEGEL: How serious do you think the current threat is of nuclear technology falling into the wrong hands?

    Schell: It is extremely real. The two most active hot spots for nuclear proliferation right now are Iran and North Korea. But you also have many other countries that are suddenly showing a renewed interest in nuclear power. The transfer of the technology in the Middle East, especially, is becoming a real danger. We may have fewer nuclear weapons, but we have more fingers on the button.

    SPIEGEL: Does that make the world today more dangerous than it was during the Cold War?

    Schell: No. I have too lively a memory of the Cuban missile crisis in the middle of the Cold War, which really looked like the potential end of the world. Regardless, it is true to say that the nature of the danger has changed.

    SPIEGEL: So the elimination of humanity through nuclear weapons is still a concrete possibility?

    Schell: Technically, the option is still there. What’s harder, though, is to frame scenarios in which all of the weapons would be fired simultaneously. Clearly, this is not as likely as it was during the Cold War. There are other colossal risks associated with lesser uses of nuclear weapons, though, ones that we are just becoming aware of. For instance, we have learned that the ecological perils of nuclear warfare can be triggered by much smaller numbers of weapons. There’s a new study showing that the use of just 100 or 150 nuclear weapons in a conflict between Pakistan and India would cause a nuclear winter through the burning of cities and the lofting of soot into the atmosphere. That would produce global famine.

    SPIEGEL: How great a threat do you think there is of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists?

    Schell: Over the long term, it’s clear that this danger is rising. It’s just in the nature of scientific knowledge and technology to become more and more available as time passes. The moment must come when it passes beyond the control of states alone and into the hands of lesser groupings.

    SPIEGEL: To what extent are nuclear power plants protected against terrorist attacks?

    Schell: So far, few adequate security precautions have been taken to mitigate the potential consequences. The nuclear energy industry has succeeded with its argument that such measures would simply be too costly.

    SPIEGEL: Does the example of the events in Japan show that human beings are incapable of learning from history? After all, the country is one that has experienced the horror of nuclear bombs first hand and nevertheless decided to rely on atomic energy.

    Schell: Kenzaburo Oe, the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, said that going ahead with nuclear power in Japan is a betrayal of the victims of Hiroshima. But perhaps Fukushima will be a turning point — not just for Japan, but for the rest of the world as well.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Schell, we thank you for this interview.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Gregor Peter Schmitz

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

     

  • Japan’s Chernobyl: Fukushima Marks the End of the Nuclear Era

    Japan was still reeling from its largest recorded earthquake when an explosion struck the Fukushima nuclear plant on Saturday, followed by a second blast on Monday. Despite government assurances, there are fears of another Chernobyl. The incident has sparked a heated political debate in Germany and looks likely to end the dream of cheap and safe nuclear power. By SPIEGEL Staff.

    Japanese television brought the catastrophe into millions of living rooms throughout the country, where viewers watched in horror as an explosion struck a nuclear reactor in Fukushima.

    The explosion on Saturday blew off the roof of the reactor building, sending a cloud of thick white smoke into the air. When the smoke had dissipated, only three of what had been four white reactor buildings were still visible.

    Nothing but a ghostly shell remained of the fourth building.

    The outside walls of the reactor 1 building had burst. The steel shell that contains the red-hot fuel rods apparently withstood the explosion, but it was unclear if a major disaster could still be averted. In addition, four other reactors in Fukushima’s two power plant complexes were not fully under control.

    Second Explosion

    Then, on Monday, a second explosion hit the Fukushima Daiichi plant, this time involving the facility’s reactor 3. The blast injured 11 workers and sent a huge column of smoke into the air. It was unclear if radiation leaked during that explosion, which was apparently caused by a build up of hydrogen, with the plant’s operator saying that radiation levels at the reactor were still below legal limits. The US reacted to Monday’s explosion by moving one of its aircraft carriers, which was 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore, away from the area, following the detection of low-level radiation in its vicinity.

    Shortly afterwards, the government announced that the cooling system for the plant’s reactor 2 had also failed. The explosions at reactors 1 and 3 had been preceded by similar breakdowns. The Jiji news agency reported on Monday that water levels at reactor 2 had fallen far enough to partially expose fuel rods.

    The television images on the weekend left no doubt: The highly advanced island nation had apparently experienced the worst nuclear catastrophe to date in the 21st century, triggered by the worst earthquake in Japanese history.

    A short time after Saturday’s blast, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano appeared on the main TV channel and spoke about the accident — in the manner of a teacher telling students during a class trip what they are going to do next. Then a grey-haired expert on nuclear power plants joined Edano and appealed to the population to remain “reisei,” to stay calm and cool.

    Reisei, reisei: It was as if the government was more concerned about cooling down the heads of Japanese citizens than the partially melted nuclear fuel rods. …..

    (-> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)